Skeen's Leap (23 page)

Timka nodded, handed Skeen the creel and a fishing pole. “Not we,” she said. “You. I told Portakil you were going fishing for kopija so the cook would make you butter-backed kopj; I said it was stupid to spend half a night chasing a handful of idiot fish; I said, me, I was going to enjoy my warm bed all the more thinking about you sitting in the mud dipping a hook in the water. There's nine kopija in there,” she nodded at the creel, “packed in waterweeds. From what everyone says, you couldn't catch those in less than five hours. He promised you a memorable feast to celebrate your last night in Oruda if you managed to get enough kopija.”

You continue to surprise me, Skeen thought. “Thanks,” she said. “A clever play.” She grinned, lifted the creel in a kind of salute. “Confusion to Mallat.”

Timka grinned back at her. “Confusion to all of them after us.” She shifted to owl and powered off.

Skeen watched her vanish into the dark. “Well,” she said. She shook her head and started for Oruda.

LAST ACT IN ORUDA.

A tall Nagamar female, one of Mallat's virgin guard, stepped into the common room of the Grinning Eel. She said nothing, just stood looking around. Pegwai, the four Aggitj, Timka, Portakil, and the head cook sat with Skeen at two tables shoved together near the fire. A few minutes after the Nagamar's arrival, the cook's assistant came marching in, bearing a steaming tureen whose enticing odors filled the room. Behind him came kitchen boys with platters of hot crusty rolls, slices of gaudy yellow cheese, bowls of greens lightly cooked in flavored oil, and plates of creamy tubers sliced and cooked in milk and cheese, then toasted under a hot flame. The Nagamar touched a regular on the arm, bent down, murmured to him, listened to his answer, gave an impatient jerk of her head and went out. Skeen relaxed with a suppressed sigh, then caught Timka watching her, lifted a corner of her mouth in a quick wry smile, a tribute to Timka's foresight. She sniffed delicately at the bowl the cook handed her, tasted it, set the spoon down, lifted her hands high and clapped them in tribute. More clapping, laughter, then talk went general, mixed with the sounds of appreciative eating.

Pegwai's captain, Terwel Mo, came in a few minutes later. Balayar, something Skeen expected, young to have his own ship. He looked almost as new and tender as the Aggitj boys and was a lot more beautiful. His skin was burnt dark by wind and sun, yet soft and supple, so fine-grained it seemed poreless. Large mouth with full lips sharply defined as if carved by a sculptor given to excessive emphasis on line, bold jutting nose, a beak with flaring nostrils, that mixture of vulgar elegance which Skeen found aesthetically pleasing. She could look at Pegwai's Captain with the same sort of detached appreciation and enjoyment she felt with Z'la the Min without being at all aroused by him while Pegwai's blurred, almost comic version of those features put a heat in her groin and a tingle in her nipples when she looked at him or brushed against him. Terwel Mo was so young. Shrewd, no doubt, intelligent, forceful, maybe even charismatic, but sooo young, so many certainties and jutting corners to him that time had not yet broken off or rubbed smooth.

The Captain's long black eyes roamed the table as he came up, settled on Timka, and began to glow. Skeen watched with amusement and appreciation as he maneuvered himself into the space next to the little Min and focused intently on her. Timka looked a bit startled at first, then settled into a slashing exchange with him that she seemed to enjoy as much as he did. The Min saw her watching, winked at her, and went back to the thrust and parry with the Captain.

The dinner wound on, fragrant with grand food and grander laughter, a complex of crosstalk, wine, ale, mulled ciders, the kopj and side dishes of small crunchy deep-fried crustaceans, and finished with a great mound of salad and pots of tea. Four hours of eating, drinking, and talking reduced the feast to shreds and the feasters to a comfortable torpor.

After a long whispered colloquy with Timka, Captain Terwel pushed back his chair and stood. “Tide turns an hour before dawn. The Meyeberri is bound to leave with it. Those sailing with her should be there at least an hour beforehand so we can get you settled in and, if you'll pardon the terms, out of the way of my crew.” He nodded at them, exchanged a long smoldering glance with Timka, then went sauntering out.

Pegwai sighed and got to his feet. “My baggage is already stowed,” he said. “It would take a dozen men and a vat of icewater to get me out of bed that early; I'll be sleeping on board. See you sometime after sunrise.”

The Aggitj conferred in low voices, waved a hasty farewell, and hurried out to spend some of their wages on a last night celebration through the tavern quarter of Oruda. Timka laughed as she watched them clatter through the door. “My turn, Skeen. I'll see you on the ship.” She got gracefully to her feet and strolled to the door, grinned over her shoulder at Skeen, then went out.

Left alone, Skeen moved to a chair by one of the fires, a glass of Portakil's own plum brandy in one hand. She sat staring into the small fire while his daughter and the hired girls cleaned away the tattered remnants of the feast. She'd got away clean. Enough time had passed to make that fairly clear. She sipped at the brandy, feeling warm and floaty, and thought about hunting some company for the night, but she didn't move. She was too lazy, too comfortable where she was. Feet up on the fender, the warmth of the fire washing over her, the warmth of the brandy spreading to meet it, she drowsed and dreamed.

The Nagamar came into the mostly empty room and crossed to the fireplace. Skeen glanced up, then away, doing her best to seem indifferent. She set the glass down on the chair arm and let her hand fall close to the darter.

Greenish copper eyes shimmering in the firelight, the Nagamar gazed at her without blinking, translucent membranes sliding over her eyes and away.

“You'll know me again,” Skeen said, giving the Nagamar a sleepy guileless smile.

“Yes,” the Nagamar said. “I will know you.” She came closer, reached toward Skeen's arm but stopped her hand before she touched the skin. “Permit me, vovo.”

Skeen bought time with a yawn, worked her mouth, blinked up at the guard. “Not gon bite?”

“No, I will not bite.” The Nagamar took hold of Skeen's wrist, lifted it, turned her hand over and sniffed daintily at the palm.

Skeen tried not to sweat; she kept her arm limp and reminded herself that abandoning the clothes she wore, scrubbing every inch of her with soap and mud and a hot bath since in the Grinning Eel's bathing chamber, disassembling the cutter and cleaning every surface, polishing the lockpicks and the knife, the only things to come back to the Inn with her and even those were wrapped in parchment sealed with wax.

The Nagamar set her hand gently back on the chairarm. “What species are you, strange one? Are you male or female?”

Sitting ruthlessly on her relief, Skeen smiled with lazy amiablity. “A species too courteous to intrude in another's private concerns. By what right, by what authority do you ask me anything?” She thought it time to wake a bit and let some indignation show. She sat up, swaying a little, playing drunker than she was, though she wasn't all that sober. The Virgin was young with the stern, pinched look of the moral autocrat.

After staring at her a moment longer, the Nagamar moved around the chair with the stalking-silent power of a highly successful predator. She looked back once again, then passed out the door into the heavily overcast night.

Skeen looked at the quarter inch of brandy left in the glass and decided it was a little too sweet for her now. She got heavily to her feet, threaded through the tables and chairs, ignoring the locals seated at them who paid her no notice either, being too involved with their own business. She waved to the sleepy nephew behind the bar and started up the spiral ramp, wincing when a foot slipped or a toe stubbed into a shadow.

DEPARTURE BEFORE DAWN.

or

THREE HOURS' SLEEP! HOW HOW HOW DO I GET MYSELF INTO THESE THINGS.

Despite a hangover that banged behind her eyeballs and a brain still dead asleep, Skeen was almost dancing as she walked down the ramp. Somehow, in spite of the miseries of her childhood, she had acquired a hope, almost an expectation, that one day the fabric of the universe would crack open and magic would shine through. She didn't know what the magic would be, but she associated its glow with the shivery happiness she felt when a sudden touch of light or color turned familiar things strange and wonderful. That instant after a rainstorm when colors had power. The moments during storms when lightning walked around her and thunder rumbled in her bones and she felt like a giant striding across the cityscape. Through all the scrambling she did and the hammering she took as she worked her way into a ship and a profession of sorts, she'd never lost that quiver of hope, that subliminal glow of expectation that came each time she started a new project. There'd never been any magic in the things that she did, no magic in her lovers even when she was free to choose them, no magic in the worlds she raided or the Pit Stops where she played. The closest thing to it was her feeling the first time she took Picarefy out; it was the casting off of shackles, the throwing off her clothing to swim naked between the stars.

Now she walked down a curving ramp lit by oil lamps newly filled and still smoky, their odor stronger with the pressure of a dawn still two hours off, and she felt that quiver of expectation again, laughed a little at it and let herself enjoy it. Another beginning ahead of her, another crack opening for wonder; more than anything else it was this feeling that made her jump at the mumblings of an ancient Soak. A Gate between universes. What could be more magical? More fundamentally absurd? She'd done it before, this leap into the dark grabbing for the flickering vanishing tail of a dream, sometimes connecting, sometimes missing and falling on her face.

She paid her bill with the last of the Poet's gold and went into the dark silent streets with the holster flap tucked back and the lanyard engaged. If Mallat decided to act without proof, she was going to get a fight she wouldn't forget.

There were dark silent forms slipping after her; she didn't try to challenge them and they stayed a steady distance behind her. She reached the wharves without incident and ran lightly up the Meyeberri's gangplank, went along the rail until she was out of the ordered confusion on the deck; Terwel Mo's crew knew their work so well that they needed no instruction, accomplishing an enormous amount in a very short time. The Captain stood on the quarterdeck watching with a relaxed alertness. When he saw her, he waved her up to him.

“Duppra Mallat sent to ask about you, where you were going, who was traveling with you, and how you paid your fare.”

“She say why?”

“She never says, only asks. Do I have to look for trouble?”

“You'd have to ask her that, not me. I've never met the woman, just saw her a couple of times when she came into town.”

He raised a brow, but had obviously expected such an answer and had asked for form's sake only. “The messenger seemed most interested in the fare and disappointed when I told her you were accredited Seeker and the Scholar Pegwai Dih was paying for the whole party.” He bent over the rail, called a crewman up and ordered him to take Skeen to her cabin. “Timka Min is there already,” he said and looked complacent. Skeen left without saying anything, telling herself he was, after all, very young.

Timka sat on one of the narrow bunks in the closet-sized cabin, perched on the end nearest the small square window. The parchment hole-cover was rolled into a tight cylinder at the bottom, the laces were twin coils tied with decorative bows. The storm plug was lifted flat against the wall above the opening, held in place by a pair of spring clips. She was looking out at the spread of dark water with its small curls of mist. Skeen swung the door shut, dropped the latch. “Got the bag up? Pegwai has to pay the Captain before we pass the locks.”

“I know.” She pushed her feet out, sat looking down at them. “It's under the bed.”

“Any problems?”

“No. No problems. It was just complicated. Juggling shifts and that weight. Just complicated.”

“Anyone see you?”

“I thought not, but who knows.”

“See any Nagamar about?”

“Not while I was diving. A short while ago there was a Nagamar on the wharf watching the ship. I think the one who came in last night when we were eating. Have they found some way to link you to the gold?”

“I doubt it. I was followed coming here, but no one interfered with me in the streets or tried to stop me coming on board.” She shrugged out of the backpack, swung it onto the upper bunk. “Come up with me and watch the departure.”

“There's no lock on the door.”

“Djabo, Timmy, who knows what's under your bed? Pegwai and he's asleep and wouldn't touch it anyway. Nagamar might guess, but there's none of them on board. And even if it's stolen, remember how I got it; I'd just have to go to work again.” She slapped at the holster, ran fingers through her tousled hair, tugged her tunic down. “Well, I won't argue. Sit here if that's what pleases you. Me, I want to watch the sails go up. I've never seen an ocean sailer leaving port, but I'm told it's a pretty thing.”

In the light from smoky torches and lanterns strung about the ship where they'd be out of the way, she saw that the organized chaos on the deck and the wharf had settled to a low hum. The Captain shouted orders that turned the bustle into a dance of straining muscles and shifting bodies, a syncopated ballet of strength and skill. The heavy fibrous cables came away from the snubbing posts, the sails rose with snaps and creaks and fluttering hooms. The ship moved away from the wharf with a massive delicacy that reminded Skeen of a mid-sized spacer backing off from an umbilical.